Class Warfare

by D. M. Fraser

  “Well, now,” Jamie says nervously, “maybe it’s only the weather, or something. You know, everything always looks kind of … murky … in the rain. Life is quite a different kettle of fish, in the rain.” He puts his suitcase on the floor, and squats on it, looking philosophical.

  “It’s not the weather, don’t kid yourself. It’s existential weltschmerz, that’s what it is, an ague in the heart, a general failure of sympathy. It’s out there, and in here, everywhere, all around. You’ll get the picture, when you’ve been here for a while. You’ll see. It goes on and on.” She begins to sing, to the tune of “Santa Lucia”:

  Anguish and agony

  anguish and agony

  a-ang-gui-ish a-and aaa-gony

  Anguish—and aaa-gony.

  Jamie studies the room, which is narrow and more or less oblong, with walls the colour of tired leather. The bed looks—and, tested, will turn out to be—lumpy; it has a noticeable list to starboard. A metal desk, sans lamp, has an out-of-date photographic map of Lonesome Town under grimy glass. The window, behind a green pull-down shade, opens into an airshaft; there’s a solid expanse of brown-brick wall opposite. “Charming scenery we have here,” Jamie observes. The sink evidently hasn’t been cleaned for some time. The one chair is covered with something beige and slippery—an endangered species of plastic, Jamie supposes. “Don’t mind me,” the young woman says. “You can take your clothes off if you want to. You’ll feel better if you do, perhaps.”

  “I don’t feel so bad,” Jamie says. “Anyway, the door’s still open.”

  “Close it.”

  He obliges. The room shrinks. “I’m Agnes,” the young woman informs him. “I used to be a model, before I discovered unhappiness.” Her hands struggle behind her head, releasing at last an abundance of rather splendid sable hair. “I guess you think I’m fat and homely, but I had a beautiful soul, once. Everybody said so. And I’ve read Marx and Freud, and the complete Jesuit Relations, too. I’m not what you’d call uncultured.” She begins to work, purposefully, on the buttons of Jamie’s shirt. “And you needn’t worry, either, about you-know-what. I’m clean.”

  Jamie feels acutely the deficiencies of his body, the wastage of years. His legs are too skinny. “Did the management send you up?” he asks, “or is this another of Fate’s devious machinations?”

  “Don’t call me a tool of the managerial class.” Agnes unzips her dress, throws it eloquently on the plastic chair. “Did you think no one fucks in Lonesome Town?”

  “I had that impression, somehow.”

  “Oh, we do it all the time, every chance we get. What else is there, anyway, here? Fuck and suck, it’s the regional industry. You must have seen the signs. This is a very service-oriented place. Why are you keeping your hands there?”

  “Um.”

  “Okay. You’re likely thinking of your own woman, if you had one; it’s the same with everyone in this dump, the first time. The way she moved below you, that only you appreciated. Sure. It’s hard to let go. Maybe she had nice tits, or a pretty little ass you couldn’t get enough of. Or if it was a guy … I guess it could have been … well, I don’t know about that stuff. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. Her name was, is, Isobel …”

  “Stop. I don’t want to know her name, or what she looked like, or anything like that. I’m here. Agnes, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Jamie suddenly isn’t feeling as peppy as he might like to feel; he’s haunted by Isobel, by the grey and green of her glance … How had she endured him? “Let everything go,” Agnes says. “It will go, in time. I know it’s miserable for you, right now; it isn’t a hell of a lot less miserable for me. Do you imagine the stories in the romance magazines aren’t true? There are people, no matter what shit they lay on you, how often they refuse you, put you down, slap at you, try their damnedest to wreck you, you still want them. When you understand that, when you get to thinking all the romantic awfulness you’ve ever heard about really does happen, even to you, you’re well on your way to Lonesome Town. That’s what it’s here for. Now c’mon, off with those gaunchies …”

  The gaunchies duly fall to the carpet, a splotch of white (well, off-white) among the simulated ferns. “I thought you said,” Jamie mumbles, “that you never let a man touch you. I’m certain I heard you say that.”

  “That was then, there. Now is another story. I bought my ticket, just like you did. They promised good times, scenic attractions, deluxe accommodation, live entertainment, the thrill of a lifetime. They were lying. But here we are, we might as well go through with it. You can stick it in and wiggle it around, anyway … Can’t you?”

  Her flesh is measurable in acreage, a rich and yielding soil. Her warmth is honest stuff. This is not, Jamie suspects, part of the regularly scheduled program of Lonesome Town, but it is not to be despised for that reason; it is not to be scorned because, even here, in this dank and inhospitable room, it’s still occasionally possible to put one over on the gods of cold and solitude, the dark gods who rule this place. Admit it, yes, Agnes is a bit of a freakish phenomenon, in the circumstances: a loving woman, delivering unlooked-for-love to Jamie McIvor, in a hotel in Lonesome Town. Or if not love, tendresse. Something. He hasn’t expected so much, is hardly equal to it, can scarcely bear the weight, the rush of it; he’s trying, though; then wow, it’s unnecessary to try—this is definitely all right—ah, this is being a great deal better than all right—she’s a mountain woman, a woman-mountain—her eyes are wide open and streaming—it’s crazy—every breath is an aria, every groan, every shout—it goes on and on—at some moment, however many hours or weeks or lifetimes later, in whatever desolation, Jamie will think, Agnes, will wake hollering that name retrieved from hopeless memory, as now he can’t restrain himself from hollering it, in full voice, very nearly joyfully …

  “Hey, cut it out in there.” Thumpity-thump on the door, and an instant of perfect stillness. A key scrapes in the lock, pauses, withdraws. Heavy footsteps trudge off. “I’d better split.” Agnes dresses quickly, efficiently, in the manner of one accustomed to such intrusions. Jamie is too stupefied to move. “It always works out like this,” Agnes says glumly. “It’s their little game. Don’t let it get you down. See you around, sometime.”

  Down. Down the corridor of the Heartbreak Hotel, around a turning, Agnes will vanish through a door Jamie will never know the number of. Radios will play through the night, solacing the sleepless. The desk clerk will snore at his desk, in the darkened lobby, his mind a slowly unreeling movie of writhing thighs, gasping bellies, breasts, limp hair spread damply on pillows … the fundamental things, his sustenance, his version of peace.

  And Jamie, in his room, will pull up the green shade and look out, for a long time, at the brown-brick wall, the appointed scenery.

  VII. Ordinary Travail

  The night passed, and the morning of the next day, and in the afternoon Jamie went to the Tourist Bureau. It was a large, tiled room with many mirrors and gleaming fixtures arrayed in the customary places, and it was, as Jamie had expected, crowded. While he was waiting in line, he had an opportunity to read the messages which others before him had scratched on the plain and dimly luminous surfaces. Woe is me, one message said, forthrightly. Jamie McIvor sucks cocks and throws rocks at airplanes, said another. A third had a more plaintive aspect: Where and what, it asked, are the Lineaments of Gratified Desire? Jamie chuckled audibly, thinking himself acquainted with those lineaments, having traced them many times with his own knobby hands, in reverie, in sleep. He felt at home in the Tourist Bureau. “Of what shall a man be proud,” he said to no one in particular, “if he is not proud of his friends?”

  Then it was his turn, at last. A small, rotund, neatly brown-bearded man looked at him poignantly; he seemed younger than Jamie, and unsure of himself. “You aren’t going to give me any trouble, are you?” he asked. “None at all,” Jamie assured him. “I’m just here on business.” The air hovered, thinly septic, between them. “That�
��s what they all say, when they come here,” the small man said. “Business, they tell me; that’s the word for what they do. In this business, you learn to expect trouble. You get so much of it, it’s normal life. Complaints, cavils, aggressive behaviour, social maladjustment, every syndrome in the book, all the time. And the fetishes—Christ, I could write a new chapter of the Visitor’s Guide about the fetishes I’ve seen. Watchbands, miracle fabrics, sneakers, lederhosen, aluminum cans, dingleberries. I don’t pretend to understand it, but there’s no denying this is a very aggressive environment, here in Lonesome Town. People stick their fingers in wall-sockets, and blame electricity for the shocks they get. Perhaps it’s nothing more than the sense they have of being, in some way, condemned, though who they think condemns them, and for what crime, I can’t rightly imagine. It’s not my job to imagine things; it’s not in the contract. I leave imagining up to the others. They’re good at it; they never stop doing it. I’m not good at much of anything, if the truth be known.” He paused, winded. “Would you like a drink?” When Jamie nodded—he’d been wondering when someone would offer—the small man produced a mickey and passed it to him; the bottle was engraved with obscure heraldry, and its contents were mellow.

  “I don’t like to waste your time,” Jamie said, looking over his shoulder at the line-up behind him, “but I’ve been having problems. I’m told it’s your job to solve problems here.” There was a sound of water gurgling, somewhere nearby. Someone said, Fucken prick won’t put his money down, he won’t drink on me, the cocksucker. “We can talk about it, at least,” Jamie persisted. “I’ve heard it’s not healthy to keep things bottled up, so to speak.” He rooted in his pockets, found a cigarette, lit it; the smoke dangled indifferently among the mirrors and the waiting supplicants.

  “Well, you see,” the small man said after a moment, “solving problems isn’t exactly what I’m hired to do. You don’t have to tell me what you’ve heard, I’ve heard it too. There are always rumours. There are always people who will, for one reason or another, deceive you. It’s part of our heritage here—a heritage of lies, half-truths, random chicanery. It’s no better anywhere else, no different. You’re going to tell me you’ve been betrayed, that the promises made to you haven’t been kept. Everyone says the same thing, everyone who comes here talks about betrayal. Trust isn’t what you’d call a marketable commodity in Lonesome Town; good faith isn’t in the least a marketable commodity. You just have to get by with what you’ve got. Problems. There may be a department, upstairs, that specializes in solving problems, but I haven’t come across it, so far. I haven’t noticed any compelling evidence that it exists, although I’ve listened to others refer to it quite positively, as if they knew. Working here has a way of making a man an empiricist, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m beginning to know,” Jamie said. “What is your job, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  The small man picked at the underside of his beard; his eyes sought harbour, and missed it, on the far side of the room. “You may have encountered theories about my work,” he said. “There are theories about a number of things in this world, and I’m prepared to believe that some of them may pertain, however tangentially, to my work. It encourages me to think so, at any rate, and who are you to deny a man his daily encouragement? If you’d seen what I have, you’d be more compassionate. More diplomatic. I feel in you, as we talk, a resistance to diplomacy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie said.

  “That’s better,” the small man said. “A decent apology is a splendid thing, a thing of inestimable beauty. In these times of travail, I’m not ashamed to be grateful for it. Last night, without seriously meaning to, I fell down a cliff, or off one. The circumstances were, as they say, mysterious. There was singing in the distance, and the music of bagpipes; it reminded me of my childhood, in which the bagpipes seemed always to be playing. The Highland Lassies marched up and down the streets of my childhood, playing “The Road to the Isles” and other sentimental airs; their thighs were smooth as marble, and as white, under their kilts. Allow me this diversion. It’s a far croonin’ … Ah yes, a man’s mind tends to scatter, somewhat, when he falls down a cliff. There were no bagpipes; there was only the scuffling of little living things, making a provident escape through the bushes. As I lay there, amid the stinging nettles, I had some leisure to contemplate my life, the train of events that had brought me to that cliff, that misstep, that fall, the long plunge down through the brambles and stinging nettles. The train of events rattled and wheezed behind me, boxcar after boxcar packed with debris, detritus, disappearing out of sight. I caught glimpses, through doors I’d neglected to close, of fragmented, shining things: old attachments, old loves, present loves, their mortal bodies brilliant as alabaster, as they went by. No wonder I can’t meet my terms of employment today. Shall I wax eloquent?”

  “I think,” Jamie said, “you’re already doing so.”

  “There’s no need to take that tone with me. Go out some night, late, to the edge of the sea. Build a fire. There may be moonlight, if you want it, but it isn’t indispensable. There may be gunfire, too, the crack of shells exploding, the whistling they make before they come down, out across the water. Go alone to this place, and stay still there. If you listen diligently, if you pay strict attention, not letting your mind stray for the space of a breath, you’ll hear the weeping.”

  “I’ve heard it.”

  “Not like this. Why do you think we have a Tourist Bureau, if not to guide you where you’ve never been? Take some professional advice, since you asked for it … It’s a special thing, out there in the dark, beside the black and oily water, where you’ll be. Small boats will keep appointments, beyond the three-mile limit, their lights like tiny, malicious eyes. Aircraft will fall out of the sky. You’ll hear, from time to time, the baying of hounds, the helpless cries of indigenous animals, a scurrying in the underbrush, behind you. You’ll be cold, shivering, if the wind comes off the sea. It often does. You’ll sit there, or stand, chilled to the bone, cursing no doubt the history that seduced you, that drew you to that destination. And then you’ll hear the weeping, a sound like no other, the weeping of the lost.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy that,” Jamie said.

  “The object of the exercise is not enjoyment. Anyone, any asshole, can toast weenies around a fire, sing favourite songs, with forgetful flesh keep the dark at bay. I’m not paid to tell you about that.”

  “What are you paid to tell me?”

  “We were talking about the weeping, which you say you’ve heard, which you say you won’t enjoy. Ha-ha, I say. The sound carries across the water, louder than the wake of ships. You, on the shore, will persuade yourself it’s mermaids or whales, some form of exhibitionistic nautical life, but you’ll be wrong. You’ll throw another log on the fire, you’ll talk to yourself to keep warm, you’ll stumble and crash face-down on the nearest log, thinking it’s a friend you can throw your arms around, and hold … your last friend in the world. The wind will come up as you lie there, and you won’t feel it, you won’t turn as it scatters the ashes … Enjoyment, you want.”

  Jamie shook himself; why couldn’t he have been born a dog, with nothing more arduous to do than digest livestock by-products? “If I’ve touched a nerve or something,” he said, “I apologize.”

  “I haven’t finished,” the small man said. “You tourists are all the same, you want to cut me off in mid-hysteria. The theme, the subject-matter of this diatribe, is enjoyment. Yours, for example, which you seem unwilling to relinquish. Oh, I reckon you’ll enjoy yourself, for a while, at the edge of the sea. It’s traditional to take pleasure in things like that. The weeping will rise and fall, in your ears, like a soprano in heat; it will play harmonics no woofer or tweeter has range to register … I’m only trying to answer your questions.”

  “Thanks,” Jamie said.

  “You’re welcome. Let’s take it from the top, there’s folks waiting. What have they to enjoy, those lost
and weeping? They die every day, in droves. They die in typhoons, in tidal waves, earthquakes, changes of government. Fires sweep through sleeping hotels, through public housing, in deep night. Plagues crawl out of gutters, tropical pests prowl the supermarkets, rats swim placidly in cisterns, biding the inexorable hour … Gas leaks from a broken main; someone is bound to need a smoke, light a match … Name it, chum, it happens. My best friend was shot by mistake, during an insurrection; he died, as friends notoriously die, in my arms. He was heavy, and I could only think of how my arms ached, supporting his weight. I felt an obligation to hear his last words, but I couldn’t catch them; he was talking, as usual, with his mouth closed. It’s safe to assume, anyway, that his last words weren’t very interesting. Many of us strive for some definitive utterance, before we die, but not all of us achieve it. Something frequently interrupts the flow of speech, the planned cadences, the faultlessly rhomboid thought. Something fails. You, Jamie McIvor, should know what I’m talking about.”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” The sound of his own name, pronounced by this sly and solemn personage, was more than he’d asked to hear. He looked around; the line-up was lengthening behind him; he couldn’t see the end of it. The walls of the Tourist Bureau exuded, now, a yellowish lustre, as though the words spoken within had deposited themselves, like spittle, on the tiles. The mirrors reflected distressed eyebrows, faces tensely set, glistening with desire. “I suffer principally,” Jamie said, “from insomnia. It’s an orthodox condition, but the orthodox cures have been taken off the market, as potentially injurious to youth. When I went to the edge of the sea, and built a fire, and sat there like an outcropping of native rock beside the black water, insomnia wasn’t a serious issue; the wind raved over the straits, small boats went by on their aimless errands, aircraft described circles in the sky. It was pleasant to sit there, watching the pageant. There was no question of insomnia.”